Who Is Al Gore Kidding?

On
guns and the National Zoo, Gore is either dishonest or stupid

We really have to have
mandatory child safety trigger locks, and photo license IDs for the
purchase of new handguns," Al Gore told a Democratic fundraising
audience, as he broke the news of Monday's shooting at the National
Zoo in Washington, DC.

Who is Al Gore kidding? The District of Columbia already has much more
gun control than "photo license IDs for the purchase of new handguns."
You can't buy new handguns in DC; you can't even bring one into the
District if you move there. If you live in DC, you can't legally buy a
handgun anywhere else.

All other firearms must be registered, and either stored disassembled,
or locked up and therefore inaccessible for home defense. DC already
has gun control laws far more severe than any Gore claims he wants at
the national level.

Gore asserts that the National Zoo shooting proves the case for
"mandatory child safety trigger locks." If there is an argument for
"mandatory child safety trigger locks," it would be that they prevent
a child from finding a loaded gun, playing with it, and
unintentionally killing himself or another child. But there aren't as
many such accidents as you think.

In
1997, the National Center for Health Statistics reported a total of 21
accidental handgun deaths for children through age 14. No, that's not
a typo: 21 deaths.

Even the 15-19 year olds only add another 34 handgun accidental deaths
in the entire United States. Don't believe us?
Check it out yourself. Look under ICD 922.0 for handgun accidental
deaths.

What about the supposed 12/13/15/17 children a day that are killed by
gunfire in the United States? That includes "children" who are 19
years old, suicides, murders, hunting accidents, a very large number
of gang members killing other gang members, and both police and
civilians shooting "children" who are engaged in rape, armed robbery,
and attempted murder.

There is a real problem with violence in the U.S. (and not just gun
violence), but almost all of it is intentional misuse of a gun. The
"mandatory child safety trigger locks" aren't going to make a
difference for intentional misuses.

Can trigger locks reduce handgun suicides by kids? Well, perhaps if
there are no workshop tools in the house, since many gun locks can be
pried off with a screwdriver in five minutes, or destroyed with a
power drill even quicker.

Like handgun accidental deaths, child handgun suicide in the U.S. is a
problem that is larger in the popular conception than in reality. The
National Center for Health Statistics reports 32 suicides by handguns
for children 0-14 in 1997. Yes, just 32 for the whole country. Throw
in the 15-19 year olds, and you get 179 more. (That's ICD 955.0 for
handgun suicides, if you want to check our figures.)

These are still tragedies, but it's hard to really believe that
trigger locks are going to make much of a dent in those suicides,
especially as long as drills are in the same house with the children,
and high bridges, rope, and automobile exhaust remain readily
available to depressed kids.

Certainly there are many gun control advocates who are sincere but
honestly mistaken or misinformed. But when you see Al Gore claim that
trigger locks and photo ID gun licenses will stop thugs like the one
at the National Zoo from carrying guns and using them viciously, one
has to conclude that Gore is either dishonest, or astonishingly
stupid. Whichever he is, he is dancing in the blood of innocents,
grotesquely trying to move his poll numbers, while distracting
attention from the very serious problem of teen criminal violence.

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